Manila: Catholic priests will be treated like ordinary citizens and the amount of wine they serve during Sunday Mass won’t count as an alibi when they are caught in drink driving cases, a local paper reported.
“It’s practically impossible that a priest will get drunk because of celebrating Mass with mompo [wine used as sacrament],” retired archbishop Oscar Cruz told the Bulletin.
“The mompo that we use during Mass every Sunday is not made of pure grape juice. Its alcohol content is only 12 per cent. The amount of wine that a priest pours into the chalice is just about two or three tablespoons. And water is added to it,” Cruz said.
If Catholic priests are caught in drink driving cases on Sundays, it would not be due to mompo given its low alcohol content, Cruz said. He, however, said: “It’s only during Sundays that priests celebrate three Masses, ordinarily they serve just one mass a day.”
Father Genaro Diwa, executive secretary of the Liturgical Commission of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), said the organisation backed Cruz’s view.
Discussions on the possible exemption of Catholic priests from drink driving offences began after President Benigno Aquino signed in early June a law giving officials authority to conduct mandatory sobriety and breath alcohol analyses on drivers involved in vehicular accidents, to check if they were under the influence of alcohol or narcotics.
The new law imposes imprisonment of up to 12 years and a fine of up to 500,000 pesos (Dh43,475) for drink driving.
The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) said the new law will be implemented in mid-June.
MMDA will coordinate with the Land Transportation Office (LTO) on procedures of sobriety tests given to motorists suspected of drink driving, said MMDA general manager Corazon Jimenez.
The MMDA currently has six breath analyser kits to determine blood alcohol concentration but more kits will be issued with the implementation of the new law across the country, Jimenez said.
